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Our Protector

Video games were the first babysitter my brother and I had. I’ll remember the comforting illumination of the Sega Genesis t.v. screen cloaking many solitary nights while we waited for our mom to come home from work. My father was away a lot, and after my parents would get done arguing I’d cherish the silence, then fill up the room with the primitive sounds of Sonic the Hedgehog. My brother and I would kneel at the console, like church, and both take part in the shared experience of getting to the next level.

One game I’ve been thinking about is Echo the Dolphin, which had such a meditative quality to it that you could easily lose hours in the day to just swimming around and getting lost in the ocean. It had a great ambient soundtrack that could pass for Aphex Twin.

I don’t really play video games anymore, but they were a big part of my childhood, like any average kid. Anyone who makes the argument that video games breed shooting massacres or violence is missing the point. People turn to video games as a consoling mechanism to escape a shitty reality and have some fun. These games were great worlds to slip into, and great companions.